The emergence of the cloud for computing applications has increased the demand for off-site installations, known as data centers, that store data and run applications accessed by remotely connected computer device users. Such data centers typically have massive numbers of servers, switches, and storage devices to store and manage data. A typical data center has physical rack structures with attendant power and communication connections. The racks are arranged in rows throughout the room or rooms of the data center. Each rack includes a frame that has vertically oriented slots or chassis between two side walls. The slots may hold multiple network devices such as servers, switches, and storage devices. There are many such network devices stacked in such rack structures found in a modern data center. For example, some data centers have tens of thousands of servers, attendant storage devices, and network switches. Thus, a typical data center may include tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of devices in hundreds or thousands of individual racks.
An individual rack has components such as a power supply, baseboard backplanes, and physical components to hold the network devices in the slots. Network devices require cable connections to a switch or router that may be typically mounted in the top or bottom slots for maximum ease of cabling. Since there are extensive cables to connect the network devices in a rack, such cables are typically grouped together and snaked through loops in a cable management arm that is suspended on the back of the rack. Thus the cables may be physically routed and held to connect to the network devices in the rack.
In known rack designs, such a cable management arm is hinged and rotated away from the back of the rack when a network component needs servicing or replacement. In the known designs, the user releases a latch to rotate the cable management arm out to avoid interference from the arm when accessing the network devices held by the rack. However, in the densely packed space in data centers, there may be space limitations that prevent the cable management arm to be fully rotated away from the back of the rack. In such circumstances, the replacement or servicing of network devices in the rack is difficult or impossible because of the interference of the cable management arm. Efficient service or replacement of network devices is essential for the peak operation of a data center. Delays because of difficulties to access network devices in racks impede the efficient operation of the data center.
Thus, there is a need for a cable management arm that allows easy access to network devices held in an equipment rack. There is also a need for a cable management arm that may be moved in different vertical positions to allow the service of network devices in a confined space.